Doing research on paranormal phenomena has been my avocation for
the last 17 years. I "normally" work as a systems engineer
at a large aerospace company in southern California. The term
"paranormal phenomena" covers a much broader area than
just remote viewing and psychokinesis. The term "remote viewing"
was coined by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ in the early 1970's
when they were working at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) International
in Menlo Park, California. Their research produced a number of
important papers and books (e.g., References 1, 2, and 3). They
were developing techniques for gathering information at a distance
using the brain/minds of individuals. In metaphysics, this is
known as clairvoyance. They named this phenomenon remote viewing
as an attempt to make it sound more scientific as well as to have
the term be descriptive of what was happening (people "seeing"
at a distance). Other laboratories now use the term "remote
perception" because all sensory data may be accessed at a
distance, not just vision (Reference 4).

Psychokinesis (PK) is defined as mind over matter. This covers
a wide range of phenomena from spoon bending, moving objects (telekinesis),
firewalking, to healing. Uri Geller made spoon bending famous
in the mid-1970's. Researchers such as Wilber Franklin, Elizabeth
Rauscher, Bill Bise, Bill Tiller, Julian Isaacs, and John Hasted
(Reference 5) have made significant contributions conducting experiments
in macro-PK.

My education and early work experience was in very conventional
engineering. In 1976, a friend had read the Institute of Electrical
and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) paper by Hal Puthoff and Russell
Targ (Reference 3) and suggested that I read it. The idea that
remote information could be accessed without a person ever having
been at the remote site did not fit anything that I had been taught
or had experienced. Yet the potential application of this caught
my attention and I began to read everything I could find that
seemed similar. This included books on "out-of-body"
travel and "astral" travel where people claimed to "see"
places distant from their physical body (Reference 6). One of
the things that became apparent to me was that a number of examples
of people's experiences seemed to include time displacement (i.e.,
they would observe something that contained information that was
not at the observed remote site at the time of the experience,
but it was there either in the past or the future). Because there
seemed to be so many reports, I took the attitude that if this
information is "real," then how could it be explained?
This is quite a different attitude than the skeptical one of "these
people are lying or their experiment is fraudulent."

I wanted to talk with other scientifically-oriented people about
this phenomenon and I quickly found that there were not many I
could talk to without being considered "crazy". Luckily
in 1979, a meeting was arranged with Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ
at SRI. They shared their experimental protocol and remote viewing
data. They also asked me to attempt replication of some of their
experiments. Within weeks of this meeting, I identified some "psychics"
who seemed to be able to "see" at a distance and I asked
if they would be willing to participate in an experiment. They
were eager to help and so my first "local" remote viewing
experiment was held in August, 1979 (Reference 7). Even though
the results of this experiment were not judged to be statistically
significant, its review by Targ and Puthoff pointed out a number
of mistakes I made. For example, I had the viewer attempt to see
five different targets in one day, resulting in data merging between
targets. Similarly, the remote observer was placed at some distance
from the targets because the man who developed the target pool
thought it must work like "the viewer seeing through the
eyes of the remote observer." In this particular experiment,
it seemed that the viewer would "look" in the opposite
direction from the intended target. Later we found out that we
needed to place the remote observer at the target because he becomes
a "beacon" for the remote viewer. This experiment also
demonstrated apparent scale size changes (i.e., remote viewer
"seeing" the remote site as if she were very small)
and position errors (i.e., very clear description of a building
next to and on the other side of the intended target building).
A lot of learning occurred by performing this experiment which
helped engineer better results from subsequent experiments.

Ingo Swann had suggested to the SRI researchers that latitude
and longitude coordinates could be given to a remote viewer as
a means of targeting a remote site, without having an observer
at the remote site, as is done in the "local" remote
viewing experiments. However, no formal experiment was done at
SRI so four of us at my work place decided to conduct this type
of experiment. Again the results were not statistically significant
but, again, much learning was achieved. This same experiment was
later rejudged using the computer judging technique developed
by Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne (Reference 8) and the results
were statistically significant. Getting the human judges (and
their minds) out of this type of experiment consistently improves
the results.

While evaluating the data from the first coordinate remote viewing
experiment, I again noticed what appeared to be a time-shift.
One of the target viewings could not be explained by the viewer
"seeing" the target at the current time, but all the
data correlated to the target site if the viewer was "seeing"
the target at a time nine years prior to the time of the viewing.
For this particular target site, that time would have been a very
emotional event because it involved the sinking of a passenger
ship. I pondered on how the human brain/mind could work in order
to access information at another time. As part of documenting
this experiment, I wrote a chapter titled "Conceptual Model
of Paranormal Phenomena." Unfortunately, the documentation
of this experiment was not publicly released by the sponsor. However,
I allowed the Archaeus Project to publish my conceptual model
(Reference 9).

In the fall of 1980, I had the opportunity to visit a number of
the parapsychology laboratories in the United States. I shared
the results of the coordinate remote viewing experiment and my
conceptual model. They appreciated the experimental data, but
did not accept my model. I said that "if you deliberately
wanted to create a paranormal event, such as psychokinesis, you
needed to create a very emotional event." I was challenged
by a researcher to test this idea, even though he thought models
like this were untestable. So, in January 1981, I gathered 21
people at my home, made a party-like atmosphere, provided silverware,
had Severin Dahlen give the "instructions", and the
results were 19 of the people experienced macro-PK. There was
some dramatic spontaneous bending. I was impressed at what I observed.
I named this a "PK Party" and began conducting these
events once a month the first year. During those first PK Parties,
many samples were analyzed in metallurgical laboratories with
interesting correlation of the results to metallurgical parameters.

People enjoy their experience at the PK Parties. Many truly macro-PK
events occur. A parapsychology instructor at a local college in
southern California was the first person to give her class a PK
Party and obtained the same results I did when I gave a PK Party.
Since then, many others have given PK Parties, all over the world.
As of February 1993, I have personally given 262 PK Parties for
nearly 12,000 people.

I also have given 36 workshops on remote viewing and conducted
many experiments in psychokinesis, remote viewing, and firewalking
during the last 14 years. I am going to discuss my research and
data I obtained. Some of these data have not been previously published.

Research
Approach

The general approach to my research has been to do the experiments
and analyze the data, often making observations that are not well
understood. I have found that trying to make a conceptual model
of the human brain/mind has provided a structure that can be quite
useful in analyzing the data as well as providing a way of predicting
the outcome of other experiments. This approach is shown in Figure
1. Originally, I wrote my conceptual model in an attempt to understand
remote viewing. As I examined my own model, I realized that many
other paranormal phenomena were explainable in the same context.
I have continued to expand and test this model ever since.

Figure
1. General Approach to My Research

Most
of our current physics models are not applicable to the human brain/mind.
After all, current science does not "believe" we are conscious,
even though most scientists think they are! I do not know how to
model emotions with equations; this limits the acceptability to
most scientists. However, I have tried to make my conceptual model
consistent with the data obtained from other researchers and much
of the anecdotal literature I have obtained. It is very difficult
to make a model without including some of your own personal bias.
Some people observe these data and make a "spiritual"
model. Others look at the data and argue that they were obtained
fraudulently because they do not fit their biases and understanding.
As an engineer, I had a hard time with the "time-shifts"
and questions of where data from other times were stored, especially
when the time shift was forward (precognition). After all, some
in the metaphysical community argue "there is no time."
I chose to keep linear time and argue that the mind is capable of
scanning throughout time, locking on to information at or near peak
emotional events, much like a radio that scans in frequency, locks
onto the peak signals (radio station), and plays out the information
through its speakers.

Figure 2 was developed while writing my conceptual
model, and it attempts to show what I mean by time-shifts and
peak emotional events. It shows a history of up and down emotional
events at the target site of a remote viewer. The filled-in emotional
event at the present time represents the emotional effort and
excitement occurring at the time a remote viewer (located somewhere
else) makes the viewing attempt which is superimposed on the "world
line" of the target site. That target, however, may have
had a peak emotional event that was much larger than the event
placed there at the current time, as shown in Figure 2. The viewer's
mind would slide back in time and access the information at the
time-shifted emotional peak. When showing this chart, I would
suggest that if people could make the emotional peak larger that
any other emotional peak on that world line (either in the past
or future), then the mind will lock on to the current time and
cause a paranormal event to happen. That is how I had the idea
for the PK Party. To create a big emotional event, why not have
a party. The paranormal event was to experience macro-PK. Having
a "crazy" party like that was O.K. in California.

Figure 2. Emotional Modulation on Time-Line

PK Parties

A typical PK Party lasts between two and three
hours. It is a group of people who usually want to experience
macro-PK. It seems to be a good environment for people to learn
the steps to performing PK. The size of the group varies. I will
not give a PK Party for fewer than 15 people because there is
not enough group effect and not enough distractions. By making
it a fun, party-like atmosphere, the participants seems to do
much better.

The general format I use for a PK Party is given
below:

•
30-45 Minute Talk - I give the history of PK Parties and tell
the people the various stages of the party. As I talk, the people
seem to get increasingly anxious to get into the bending.

•
The steps for doing PK are used throughout the party and are listed
below:

1. Make a mental connection with what you want to affect.

2. Command what you want to happen.

3. Release it (let it happen).

•
"Test" Flatware using Dowsers - I teach people how to
use both pendulum and rod type dowsers to get "yes"
and "no" answers. Approximately 90% of the people readily
can use them. For those who have never been exposed to any paranormal
activity, this dowsing step seems to begin to get their attention
and the excitement builds. They then use the dowsers to "test"
the flatware to determine if the spoons and forks are "willing
to bend for them." This procedure begins the process of getting
an unconscious connection between the individuals and the flatware
they are going to attempt to bend using PK. Forged-stainless flatware
seems to be the easiest for people to bend and therefore serves
as good feedback at the beginning of their PK experience. People
start with four or five forks and spoons that have said "yes,
it's willing to bend".

•
"Kindergarten" Bending - I give the final instructions
again which are the steps indicated earlier. Each person starts
with one forged-stainless steel fork or spoon. They hold it in
one hand. That makes the connection step easy because they know
exactly where it is (in their hand). Then I have the whole group
command their forks or spoons to bend by shouting "BEND,
BEND, BEND!" The shouting is not really necessary, but it
seems to get the group excitement going. The bending usually starts
within seconds after I say "Release it", meaning the
thought. From that point on it really does not take any concentration.
In fact, the more distractions, the easier it is for people to
"let go." I encourage people to scream and get very
excited when their flatware is bending, because it helps the other
people "let go" by distracting them.

Even though the metal used in "kindergarten" could be
bent by physical force, the people are trying to find the few
seconds that the metal loses its structure (i.e., becomes rubber-like)
during which time they can form the flatware into mangled shapes.
They usually feel warmth coming out of the flatware when it is
ready. I named this "Warm-Forming". Approximately 85%
of the 12,000 people at my PK Parties have experienced this level
of PK.

•
"High School" Bending - After a person has bent up four
or five pieces of flatware, then they are given a silver-plated
spoon. Their task is to buckle the spoon bowl. I usually also
have steel and aluminum rods available. Sometimes I also include
old fashioned hacksaw blades. This level is characterized by bending
things that could not be bent using only physical force. I give
people a "Certified Warm Former" badge when they are
successful at this level. About 18% of my PK Party attendees have
achieved this level of PK.

•
"Seed Sprouting" - Some people really do not like bending
metal, so I let them sprout seeds. They command the seeds to "sprout".
Often a small sprout about 1/4" long appears within 5 to
10 minutes.

•
"Graduate School" - For me this is the most exciting
part of the PK Party. I give two long tine forks (dinner forks)
to each participant and they hold one in each hand at the bottom
of the handle. They are not allowed to touch each fork with the
other hand. We command them to bend, and 11% of the people have
experienced spontaneous fork bending. Sometimes a person has both
forks bend or twist. These are not trained magicians.

•
Pictures and Questionnaires - At the end of each PK Party, I ask
the people to fill out a questionnaire to report their perception
of the PK Party. I also take people's pictures with their bent
up material and send them a copy of the picture.

Of the 262 PK Parties that I have given, most have been quite
successful. I keep records of the number of people who experienced
the various PK levels, as well as documenting each PK Party. Years
ago, I found that by trying to teach a very small group to do
PK, the success rate was very poor. Figure 3 shows the relationship
between the percent of people experiencing PK at the kindergarten
level as a function of the number of attendees at a PK Party.

Figure
3. Success rate at PK Parties

The very large PK Parties were in the first five years of my PK
Party experience. At that time, I really did not know how to handle
large groups. I believe if there had been a helper for every twenty
people, the success percentage would be at least 85% or higher.
Others have reported giving PK parties for large groups with very
good results. The least successful PK Party was held at a convention
for parapsychologists. They have "proof" as their primary
motivation for their research and seem to be uncomfortable with
PK Parties. This is in contrast to the order of my priorities,
which are 1) application, 2) theory, and 3) proof. I believe that
when remote viewing and psychokinesis are applied and good theoretical
models are developed, proof will be self-evident.

One of the items on the questionnaires given
out at the end of PK parties is that it asks for each individual's
perception of the percentage of the physical force that they used
to bend their flatware (e.g., no PK would be 100%). Figure 4 shows
the distribution of percentage of the 6484 people who filled out
questionnaires, as of February, 1993, as a function of the individuals'
perception of the force required. More than half of the people
felt that they used less than half the force necessary to physically
bend the flatware. I did not start giving out the questionnaires
until the 44th PK Party and sometimes people leave a party without
completing the questionnaire. People obviously recognize that
some physical force is required during the kindergarten bending.
However, during the graduate school bending, people are really
impressed when their fork bends because they are not allowed to
touch it with the other hand.

Figure 4. Distribution of Force Estimates

Many experiments have been conducted within the
PK parties. There does seem to be some type of field effect created
within the area encompassed by the people at a PK party. In one
experiment, we had sealed pop bottles with brass strips and other
metals inside with one bottle assigned to each individual. Several
people did not come to the party so there were a few extra bottles.
Similar bottles were places in other homes. All of the rest of
the bottles were placed in the center of the circle of people
at the party. Even though none of the metal was bent at the end
of the party, the bottles were left there for several days. The
next morning, the brass strips were bowed and twisted. All of
the brass strips at the PK Party location continued to bend for
three days, and then stopped bending. Cutting the sheets of brass
had apparently introduced stress into the resulting strips. The
PK effect acted to relieve the stress, much like if the brass
strips had been put in a furnace and allowed to "creep".
The control bottles at the other home did not have any bending
in the brass strips throughout the same time period.

Another experiment (Reference 10) was to take two packages of hacksaw
blades, each containing two blades. The Rockwell hardness (Superficial
15N Scale) of each blade was initially measured. One blade was kept
in a locked safe at my work place and not exposed to PK. The other
three hacksaw blades were taken to four PK Parties in a brown bag
and placed in the center of the circle of people during each party.
Only my metallurgist (Severin Dahlen) and I knew this experiment
was being conducted. The blades exposed at the party were not ever
placed near the control blade. All of the blades were tested for
hardness prior to each PK Party over a three month period. The hardness
of the three exposed blades all reduced to near that of annealed
steel from the original very hard steel of the hacksaw blades. The
control blade maintained its hardness throughout the experiment.
The measured hardness of these hacksaw blades are shown in Figure
5.

Having
tested the PK effect on a number of different metals that were formed
using different techniques, I concluded that the number of "dislocations"
in the grain boundaries of the metal is a dominant parameter. The
harder the steel, the more dislocations, the easier it is for people
to PK that metal. Although we do not know how the mind can arrange
to put "energy" into the metal, it does seem to use the
dislocations as transducers. With no place to go, the energy turns
into heat and melts the grain boundaries. With most of the grain
boundaries molten for a few seconds, the metal loses its
structure and can be easily formed (kindergarten and high school
PK) or relieve internal stress (graduate school PK). This concept
was first reported in Reference 11 and is illustrated in Figure
6.

It
has been my contention that if we could find a method to reliably
provide feedback to a person attempting to affect something (as
in biofeedback), then an amplified effect could be obtainable. The
silverware used in the PK Parties does provide some feedback. However,
because of the large variation in the forks and spoons that I get
at the swap meets and thrift stores, they are not very useful for
training. People that attend many PK Parties do seem to get better
and better at using PK. Table 1 lists a number of approaches to
finding a PK measurement technique for feedback. A two minute cyclical
signal occurred at the time the fork of a young girl, sitting within
six feet of the Hall Effect sensor, had the top fall over resulting
in a 90 spontaneous
bend during the graduate school part of a PK Party. The data recorded
on a pen chart recorder is shown in Figure 7.

Figure
7. Recording of Hall Effect Sensor during PK Party

Table
1. PK Measurement Attempts

Magnetic
Media - No results

Acoustical
Dislocation Movement - Limited results

Liquid
Crystal Displays - No results

Thermo
Liquid Crystal Displays - No results

Hall
Effect Chips

• Meter Output - Response during commands

• Chart Recorder Output

(Off center during bending; returned to center

during technical discussions)

•
Chart Recorder Output / Thermal Insulation

(Two minute period cyclical signal for 10 minutes)

This
particular Hall Effect sensor was constructed with two Hall Effect
chips placed back to back (in order to cancel any temperature
effects) and the output run through a bridge circuit to the chart
recorder which was located about 20 feet from the sensor. The
sensor was also enclosed in a thermos bottle for temperature isolation.
The sensor was on a stand, placing it about four feet off the
floor. The sensor was aligned perpendicular to the earth's magnetic
field lines in order to minimize the effect of the earth's magnetic
field.

The reason Hall Effect chips were chosen in the first place was
not to measure the magnetic field, as is their normal application,
but to see if the current through them is affected by PK modifying
the dislocations in them by changing the mobility of electrons
moving through the crystal. However, subsequent use of the same
sensor has produced no results. The internal dislocations in any
metal exposed to PK are changed, making this an unreliable sensor
for feedback and training.

Remote
Viewing Experiments

As indicated earlier, I began conducting remote viewing experiments
in 1979. The easiest type of experiment to conduct is called "local"
remote viewing. An observer is sent out to a randomly-selected
site to observe the target while the viewer and interviewer are
still back at the home or laboratory (Reference 12). This protocol
was developed by Puthoff and Targ at SRI. The coordinate remote
viewing we conducted simply identified the location of the target
to the viewer using latitude and longitude coordinates. In the
early experiments, the interviewer would read the coordinates
to the viewer, which they hated because of all the numbers (coordinates
in degrees, minutes, and seconds). Some skeptics thought the experiment
must be fraudulent or we were using viewers who had memorized
the world map (down to a 100 foot resolution). To avoid this criticism
in later experiments, I kept the coordinates inside envelopes
which were handed to the viewers. There was no change in the quality
of the viewing!

One of the models some people propose for explaining remote viewing
is that the brain somehow picks up information using the extremely
low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic brain waves that we measure
using the electroencephalogram (EEG). It is very hard to explain
precognition with this model. If an ELF model was a good one,
then a remote viewing experiment done over a 400 mile distance
should not produce good data because that distance is between
the near and far fields at ELF frequencies. I undertook
an experiment similar to the local remote viewing experiments
with Elizabeth Rauscher as the outbound observer. She selected
the targets in the San Francisco area, about 400 miles north of
the viewing location in southern California (Reference 13). This
experiment was statistically significant.

Russell Targ, and then Hal Puthoff and Stephen Schwartz began
the associative remote viewing (ARV) experiments which associated
either objects or pictures with the outcome of a future event.
The correct object or picture was shown to the viewer once the
outcome was known. The viewer's job was to look ahead on their
own world line to "see" the object or picture shown
to them at the feedback time. These experimenters used the stock
market movement as the future event they were trying to predict.
Some very good results were obtained. I summarized their results
and made my own speculation on how this works in Reference 14.
With the help of Stephen Schwartz and Rand De Mattei of the Mobius
Society, I wrote a computer program which processes multiple viewer
data, associates pictures with the possible outcomes, judges the
data with respect to the selected pictures, and suggests the most
likely outcome (it does not suggest how much to bet). I conducted
a large ARV experiment, having 15 groups participating nationwide,
with the groups ranging between 1 and 15 people. The first 49
trials were 73% correct. Then the experiment went random and continued
at chance until I stopped it. Some viewer psychological issues
seemed to overwhelm the importance of the judging mechanization
provided by the computer program.

In the early 1980's, Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne developed a
method for judging remote viewing experiments (Reference 8) that
significantly improved the statistical results because the computer
can handle a lot more data than a human judge. This was accomplished
by having the viewer answer 30 questions, yes or no, about their
perception of a target scene. Each target would also have a controlled
set of answers to the same questions. The computer compares the
viewer's answers with the control answers, and can do this for
a large number of viewers and targets. Human judges tend to get
swamped if there are more than seven targets viewed in an experiment.
Figure 8 is a copy of the shortened questionnaire representing
the 30 questions from the Jahn and Dunne judging technique.

As mentioned earlier, I have given 36 remote viewing workshops
over the last 13 years. These started because various friends
wanted to learn how to do remote viewing. Originally, I only had
a target pool of 55 scenic targets that had the coordinates precisely
defined. Each target had an envelope which contained two additional
envelopes. One envelope contained a sheet of paper with the coordinates
of the target site. The other envelope
contained a feedback package (e.g., picture of the target, map
of the area, a description of the target, the remote viewing questionnaire
with the 30 questions answered by another person who evaluated
the site by studying all the feedback information). The people
were paired up in two-person teams, one being the viewer and the
other being the interviewer. The viewer would describe their target,
draw a sketch of it, and answer the 30 questions on the remote
viewing questionnaire. They would switch roles so that each individual
could get the experience.
I thought that symbols might be good remote viewing targets because
they are simple and usually made up of simple line segments (e.g.,
straight lines, circles or ellipses, and arcs). Gail Duke of the
Archaeus Project developed a target pool of 100 symbols, each
put in an envelope, to be used as remote viewing targets. I began
using these symbol targets in 1988. The first experiment in a
remote viewing workshop was to view the symbol in the envelope
held by one person. I called this a "beacon symbol".
I also used this as a way of explaining to the people how to do
the viewing and the procedure for evaluating the results (Reference
15). Then people are allowed to reach in a bag and select an envelope
containing their symbol target. The people view their own target
and sketch it on the evaluation sheet. After everyone has completed
the viewing, they are allowed to open the envelope with the symbol
picture and the correct answers for the evaluation of that symbol.
There is a scoring system which can result in a maximum of 37.5
points.

Figure 9 shows two examples of how people drew the symbols contained
in their envelope. Interestingly, often the drawings are rotated
from the target symbol. Also, often the drawings contain several
parts which are positioned differently than the intended target
symbol and sometimes the scale size of one or more of the elements
in the drawing are different than the intended symbol. While it
would be great if the viewer would draw an exact replication of
the target symbol, as if they had an exact bit-map in computer
terminology, it seems like the mind/brain somehow processes the
viewing data more like "object oriented" code or vector
mapping. Only 10 or so years ago, the computer people found that
it was much more efficient from a computer memory utilization
standpoint to store data and drawings using the vector coding
than to store the complete bit map. Maybe we are starting to learn
something about how the brain handles information. In general,
the results of the symbol viewing have not been nearly as good
as the viewing of scenes. A scene can be thought of as being very
information-rich; and keeping the data in vector format is close
to having a full bit map of the target scene.

Figure
9. Examples of Symbol Remote Viewing

The results in terms of the single tailed p-value of the groups
participating in the last 23 remote viewing workshops are included
in Table 2. This table updates the similar table shown in Reference
15.

I like to do remote viewing workshops with small groups because
people seem to need a lot of personal attention. Also there is
a great deal of paper handling and it becomes unwieldy with a
large group. Only a few of the workshops had significant

(p
< 0.05) results with the symbol viewing targets, while 15 of
the 21 workshops that did the scenic viewing had significant results.
The odds that these results could not be explained by chance are
astronomical. More important than the statistics is that most
of the workshop attendees have their own personal viewing experience
that helps them understand that this is a real phenomenon of which
humans are capable.

Firewalking

Friends asked me to research firewalking in an attempt to understand
how most people are able to walk across a bed of hot coals in
their bare feet and not be burned. Actually, about 31% of the
people who do the firewalking seminars get small burn blisters
and about 3% get badly burned (Reference 16). I planned to pass
this up, but Tony Robbins called me to ask if I would do a PK
Party for graduates of his firewalking
seminars. I gave them a PK Party and in return, I received a free
pass to his seminar. Who could pass up a free firewalk? It was
an interesting experience. My curiosity kicked in and I began
to take infrared pictures of firewalkers and measured the temperature
of the coal bed. I made a unit that was attached to one foot of
a firewalker that held one-and five-mil diameter thermocouples.
A long cable connected the thermocouples, through a belt around
the firewalker's waist to an Apple computer with an analog to
digital board which digitized the temperature at 75 data points
per second. When a one mil diameter thermocouple was at least
2 mm from the bottom of the foot, the temperature readings were
like that shown in Figure 10. This particular data channel saturated
at 1400 o Fahrenheit.

Because the thermocouples were very small, they had an incredibly
quick response time. It can be seen that during the second step,
some ash must have insulated thethermocouple, dropping the temperature
down to only 600 to 800 o. Often these little thermocouples would
not survive the "hostile" environment. The thermocouples
that were placed immediately next to the skin showed no change
in the ambient temperature. After taking data at 15 different
firewalking seminars, I concluded that current instrumentation
is simply not good enough to help understand the mechanisms involved
in protecting the body during these events. I examined most of
the theories people talk about. To me there seems to be a lot
of correlation between the PK Parties and the firewalk seminars
(e.g., 1. people intend to get across the bed of hot coals without
being burned, 2. it is a terrifying, peak emotional, experience
standing in front of the fire, and

3. stepping out onto the hot coals is analogous to "letting
go"). Seems like PK to me!

Conclusion

Much is not understood about paranormal phenomena. It seems as
if the skeptics have more resources than the researchers. However,
we have come a long way in researching and understanding some
of these phenomena in just the last 15 years. Because of the pioneering
work at SRI and Princeton University, there are some people within
the government and the scientific community that recognize some
applications of remote viewing. The general public and media are
still fairly skeptical, because they are not aware of the data.

While myself and many others have given PK Parties, we have exposed
only a small fraction of the public to psychokinesis. Furthermore,
the implication that if a magician can perform a trick bending
a spoon, that everyone bending spoons is being fraudulent is ridiculous.
I have given many PK Parties and I have seen many incredible PK
events and I am totally convinced of the reality of the ability
of the human mind to affect things.